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Exchange of opinions with Mr. Blancaflor, Director General of the IPOPHL

August 21, 2014, we held an opinion exchange meeting with Mr. Ricardo R. Blancaflor, Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) at the JPO, and eight members from Asia PJ and the Fourth International Committee participated from JIPA. The meeting was a valuable opportunity to obtain information from the top of the administration.
At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Blancaflor gave an introduction speech introducing recent activities of the IPOPHL and expressing expectations for Japanese companies toward the ASEAN economic integration, which is scheduled in 2015. He emphasized anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting measures of the IPOPHL in his speech, saying "the measures have been taken by the whole government, and the Philippines has been removed from the watch list of the US Special 301 this year," "the IPOPHL also has the authority to investigate infringement goods" and "since the Philippines is also a member of the Madrid protocol, we would like Japanese companies to further take advantage of trademark application when they make a foray into the Philippines."

JIPA members described the Philippines research team, whose visit is scheduled in November, and asked questions, for example, about the system for the deferred publication of designs and activities of AWGIPC (ASEAN working group on intellectual property cooperation), which Mr. Blancaflor and Ms. Santos of the International Cooperation Division kindly answered.
Mr. Blancaflor further gave advice about measures against pirated copies and counterfeiting to third countries and a description of the draft five-year plan of AWGIPC after 2016.

This fiscal year, JIPA plans to send a research team of the Fourth International Committee to an intellectual property seminar held in Manila, and send relevant people to an event. Expectations for the Philippines IP are increasing toward the economic integration in 2015.

[Update 2014-11-14 ]